History has rightly acclaimed Claudio Monteverdi(1567-1643) as one of the most significant composers of all time. He was the seminal figure in the transition from massive polyphonic edifices of the Renaissance to the Baroque’s directed tonality. His innovations in harmony and dissonance treatment marked Monteverdi as the prophet of a “new practice” that sought to actualize an ancient belief in music’s literal power to sway human action and emotion. It also drew him into a prominent debate over the future of music. In essence, his greatness may be attributed to a careful respect for superlative poetry. It was Monteverdi who championed text expression and its emotive power above purely musical considerations of counterpoint and form.

Monteverdi published eight books of secular madrigals between 1587 and 1638. His Fourth Book appeared in Venice in 1603. Most are scored for divided sopranos, though occasionally we find works with two alto (or tenor) parts. Both works today are performed in SAATB scoring, though careful listeners will note that Monteverdi rarely engages all five singers at the same time. Instead, he composes typically for two to four voices, changing the groupings and constantly varying both tonality and texture. “Cor mio, ventre mi viro” plays on the transformative power of love. Its quick modulations between living and dying find a clear echo in Monteverdi’s rapid changes of mood. “Io mi son giovenetta” presents a biting repartee between the young shepherd and his beloved. Monteverdi employs a more fluid style, overlapping statements of the girl’s winsome gaiety with commentary from the male voices. At the middle, these roles are reversed as the lower three parts express the shepherd’s sudden realization that he, too, is young! Chasing fugal patterns unfold over the key word “fuggi” (flee), for the critical third section destroys the young man’s hope for requited love; her eyes hold no warmth for him, despite the lush musical setting Monteverdi provides.

Composer Stefan Heucke has been a frequent guest at Staunton Music Festival. Over the last decade, we have been honored to present numerous commissioned premieres of his music, and 2025 is no exception. His works are performed throughout the world by prominent orchestras and soloists, and he has been composer-in-residence with several European orchestras and at international festivals on numerous occasions. Heucke’s works are published by Schott Music International, and he lives as a freelance composer alternately in Germany and in Italy. For today’s premiere, Stefan adds the following comments:

At the Staunton Music Festival in 2022, I met the great harpist Sivan Magen and immediately had the desire to write a chamber music work for him to perform with Staunton musicians in the future. Sivan welcomed this idea. So I began this Quintet in the summer of 2024, just before I started working on my Sextet Op. 140, which was also commissioned by SMF and will be premiered next Saturday. It quickly became clear to me that the two pieces would be siblings. Together they would deal with two sides of the “Day/Night” coin. It was almost inevitable that the harp quintet would represent the lighter, bright side of Day, while the sextet would embody the dark and threatening side of Night. That’s how I composed it, whereby – as in reality – the day side also has its shadows and the night side its lights.

The harp is a diatonic instrument, and so only seven different notes are available at any one time (comparable to the white keys on a piano). Notes beyond these seven are produced by means of pedals. It is almost inevitable that numerous tonal centers are created, which can then be gradually transferred to very distant keys. I have made extensive use of this possibility.  Thus the first and last movements unfold around the center of A major, the second from E minor and the third from D minor.  The Quintet is a piece in which the sun shines, although it is repeatedly concealed by clouds of varying density.  But nevertheless, it shines!

The name of John Dowland (1563-1626) continues to enchant as the representative voice of a significant era in cultural history (Elizabethan England), and his hundreds of delightful solo lute works are perhaps his signature efforts. His reputation blossomed in the early music movement of the mid-20th century, and recent recordings by Sting have made Dowland’s name a buzzword even in non-classical circles. The lute was his own best instrument, and he traveled across Europe beginning in 1595 in a quest to encounter the best modern trends in music. After working for many lucrative years in Denmark, this Catholic musician returned to take a post as court lutenist under James I in 1612. Dowland also wrote songs, usually with lute accompaniment, that drew inspiration both from the exceptional poetry of his contemporaries as well as the prevailing aesthetic mood known as “melancholy.”  In a tender solo work like “La Mia Barbara,” we hear the full fruits of what Dowland absorbed from his lengthy European tour, combining French lute techniques with the lyrical power of Italian madrigals.

To judge by its opus number, the Octet for Winds, Op. 103, by Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) would seem to fit neatly among his other late-period masterworks, such as the A-major Piano Sonata (Op. 101), the two Cello Sonatas (Op. 102), and even the epic Hammerklavier Piano Sonata (Op. 106). However, this morning’s Octet for Winds is not a product of Beethoven’s seasoned maturity. In fact, he composed this music while still living in his native Bonn. The work was never assigned an opus number at the time because it wasn’t published; that only happened several years after Beethoven’s death, and later catalogers inserted it within his oeuvre as Opus 103.

Beethoven was a precocious child, no doubt, and his plans upon reaching his 21st birthday included journeying to Vienna in order to study with Mozart. The latter died in late 1791, and Beethoven’s future followed a slightly different path with a period of study under Haydn. Eager to impress his new teacher, Beethoven dusted off some music from his Bonn portfolio. Haydn showered the young man with great praise in a letter sent to the Elector at Bonn, Beethoven’s sponsor, in November 1793. Haydn included some “evidence” of his new pupil’s progress, including the Wind Octet which the Elector immediately recognized as having heard some time earlier. Caught up in Beethoven’s ruse, Haydn was clearly embarrassed, and the episode boded ill for their short time together.

What can we make of this youthful music then? The Octet is scored for two horns, oboes, clarinets and bassoons, and it unfolds across four conventional movements. It is admittedly refreshing to hear Beethoven’s creativity untouched by the ramped-up rhetoric of his titanic “heroic style,” which did not firmly settle in until a decade after this Octet was written. The opening theme features a carefree oboe motif supported by different combinations of winds. The harmless oboe turn figure pops up throughout the exposition as thematic element, transition figure to the second theme, and closing idea. It gets passed from part to part in the bustling development, which sounds almost like operatic dialogue. In a typical student move, Beethoven slows the motif down to twice and thrice its normal rhythm in order to use it once more, now as the nadir of drama just before the invigorating recapitulation. The movement closes with the simplest possible chord progression in E-flat major – a clear sign that this is not the mature Beethoven who would have added a massive coda.

For the charming Andante in B-flat major, Beethoven relies on simple, aria-like melodies to carry the movement. Of course, he makes the expected modulations into related keys (such as F major, G minor, and even C minor). Where he shines, I feel, is in the careful control of texture and ensemble. The music ranges from tender duets up to full octet scoring, though the latter occurs sparingly. Overall, the movement enjoys the quiet restraint of intimate chamber music, usually involving five or fewer players at a time. This is not a short movement, and by its final cadence we are now well beyond the middle of the work’s overall duration. Thus the final two movements, a Menuetto and Presto, are poised to sprint by on fleet feet.

True to form – and here one can already pick out hints of Beethoven’s later Scherzos – the Menuetto moves very briskly. Its main theme features rhythmic snap and colorful chromaticism in a successful bid to raise the intensity following the Andante. He even manages to squeeze in a humorous Trio. The cheery tone spills over into the brilliant Rondo finale. Beethoven deftly combines rising and falling figures and comically fast rhythms in a tour de force display of dazzling woodwind writing. It’s the kind of material that would make composers much his elder jealous – so assured, so facile, and handled with a sense of comic timing that apparently he didn’t need Haydn to teach him.

So we come back to where we started with this Octet. We hear the voice of a young man (Beethoven was probably 21 at the time), confident in his abilities, eager to work on larger projects and inject some comedy and virility where he saw these qualities lacking. On the basis of this Octet for Winds, Haydn was unstinting in his praise: “Beethoven will in time become one of the greatest musical artists in Europe, and I shall be proud to call myself his teacher.” Given the embarrassing fallout that occurred with the Bonn Elector over this supposedly “new” music, the second part of Haydn’s statement surely rings less true than the first.

Jason Stell, © 2025